student Sophia Peters, who would run the experiments as part of her Ph.D. There should have been plenty of fine ash particles in the atmosphere and on Earth's first land masses."įor their experiments, Trapp and Semenov teamed up with Trapp's Ph.D. After all, the early Earth should have been geologically active. The logical next step was to set up an experiment to test the cosmic version of Fischer-Tropsch.ĭmitry Semenov, a staff member at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, says, "When Oliver told me about his idea to experimentally investigate the catalytic properties of iron meteorite particles to synthesize building blocks for life, my first thought was that we should also study the catalytic properties of volcanic ash particles. "When I looked at the chemical composition of the Campo-del-Cielo iron meteorite, consisting of iron, nickel, some cobalt and tiny amounts of iridium, I immediately realized that this is a perfect Fischer-Tropsch catalyst," explains Trapp. Specifically, Oliver Trapp, a professor at Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich, and Max Planck Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), wondered whether the so-called Fischer–Tropsch process for converting carbon monoxide and hydrogen into hydrocarbons in the presence of metallic catalysts might not have had an analog on an early Earth with a carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere. ![]() Key inspiration for the research came, of all things, from industrial chemistry. In that way, they are akin to the tools used in manufacture: Tools are necessary to produce, say, a car, but after one car is built, the tools can be used to build the next one.įrom industrial chemistry to the beginnings of the Earth Catalysts are substances whose presence speeds up specific chemical reactions, but which do not get used up in those reactions. The key supporting role goes to iron particles produced from meteorites, which act as a catalyst. The research described here presents a new way for such organic compounds to form on planetary scales under the conditions prevalent on the early Earth. Given how fast life itself arose, it would be plausible for this comparatively simple first step to have been completed quickly, as well. ![]() The first step towards the emergence of life is the formation of organic molecules that can serve as building blocks for organisms. ![]() For comparison, consider that afterwards, it took about 2 billion years for the first proper (eukaryotic) cells to form. To the best of our current knowledge, life on Earth emerged a mere 400 to 700 million years after the Earth itself had formed. Their article, "Synthesis of prebiotic organics from CO 2 by catalysis with meteoritic and volcanic particles," is published in the journal Scientific Reports. By experiment, they showed how iron particles from meteors and from volcanic ash could have served as catalysts for converting a carbon-dioxide rich early atmosphere into hydrocarbons, but also acetaldehyde and formaldehyde, which in turn can serve as building blocks for fatty acids, nucleobases, sugars and amino acids.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |